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      Matters Arising Did you know that if you don’t speak in the first ten minutes, you actually cease to exist? The fat of the universe will eat itself and you will be a breathless speck, rattling a pencil. So speak, repeat the bloodless phrase from...

      Nature Morte The funereal bouquet falls away from itself: sepals are the first to sag, then chrysanthemums drop to the floor like pom-poms. Petal tips and leatherleaf shrink, becoming brittle to the touch. Anthers fur into pollen grains speckling...

      Michael ‘A locked garden is my love.’ Song of Solomon When I think of Michael I think of ivory, of the epicene torso of a wounded Christ rising from a loosening loincloth with Pre-Raphaelite lilies; of how he made me stop so Allegri’s Miserere...

      Twilight in the Forestry Board Garden How easily a willow, loitering by the river, impersonates a figure turning, in the act of asking for directions, or simply wondering whether to step into the water. In twilight things grow fluid, lose their...

      The Earl of Charleville’s Forest The grounds of my local ascendancy castle, a favoured haunt for joggers. As I trot along the ancient path lined by centenarian oaks and beeches I imagine himself on his postprandial walk accompanied by his loyal...

      Is That Really How To Do It? A seat and shelter commemorating the Tolpuddle Martyrs was erected in 1934 by the wealthy London draper Sir Ernest Debenham. Transporting half a dozen Dorset men on trumped-up evidence: the gentry’s way of thwarting...

      Bee Dress After Girl with a Bee Dress image by Maggie Taylor For your sixteenth birthday, you got a dress made from a swarm of live bees, pulled in at the waist with a drawstring, which you were made to wear on special occasions. If you refused to...

      Soundtrack To A Pause There's a cornered big cat in my attic, snarling, lip-curled; its guttural growl swallowed at the back of its throat. Nearby, the deadened thunk of a skull, knocking persistently against the skylight: tick, tick, ticking, out...

      The Story of ‘I’ My ‘I’ landed with a thump. One day a mother was chasing the tails of two small sons, the next I was there, orange as an apricot. Distracted, she bundled me into blankets and tired cardigans, carried me home on her lap in the...

    Abigail Ottley writes poetry and short fiction from her home in Penzance. As an older woman writer with a passion for history, she usually has at least one foot in the past.  facebook.com/abigailelizabethottley...

  Mark Connors is a poet from Leeds. Life is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015,  Nothing is Meant to be Broken by Stairwell Books in 2017. Optics was published by YAFFLE in 2019 and After in 2021. www.markconnors.co.uk.

      The Semi-Fast Service to 1969 I catch snatches of serviced apartment blocks being unbuilt, rows of terraced houses resurrecting from a rubble heap back into their heyday. As per usual, when the train pulls in to 1999, I ease on a pair of swimming...

      petrichor it has been raining in the night both french doors are open wide cool damp air converses around my knees not one flower moves except to drip occasionally the gentle violin music flows over the scene of my third cup of tea my third...

      Water, Guilt, Hemisphere You come in like water. I hear the ghost note, x, pp, turn to see you eerie in the half and half of the refrigerator light and my shadow. I don't need another guilt trip, stumble upon a photo album, lose myself in a...

      Lost and Slaughtered Sisters The cruel stepmother, the Beast, I read of them, and other grimmer tales but, said mother, some are too nasty, just don't bother with those. That last one, the Bloody Chamber or the Forbidden Room, I shouldn't read...

      Day Off Vultures don’t fly on Sundays, it’s their day off. No use saying you’d like to see them flying about, they won’t do it, haven’t for ages. I can tell you where they are - they’re down by the disused railway hanging out, walking up and down...